Clockwise:
- Family portrait
- The boy, the husband and the big yellow house
- The boy and the water buffalo at the zoo
- The boy trying to understand why we still have the metal post for a political sign long gone in our yard
- Peacock at the zoo
- Run, boy, run!
- Our anniversary
- Daddy and the boy
- Toddler lunch carnage
- The boy and the elephants
- Sunflower seedlings
- The boy and the window well
Books: I Like It When . . .by Mary Murphy – We still have this in our possession. The boy memorized it after one freaking reading. He loves it. Where Is Home, Little Pip? by Karma Wilson – This was a hit and miss. I think it was a little too long to hold a toddler’s attention, but he did ask for it regularly, if even just to get through 1/2 of it before screaming for something else. Bear and Ball by C. Wright – This was a little too young for him. He memorized it and read it to himself by the end of the day. Build A Burrito by Denise Vega – We still have this one, as well. He’s a big fan, especially of the “chiles picantes”, which he repeats the moment we get past the “yummm, tortillllllllla!” Buenos Dias by Berner – He liked repeating the animal noises in Spanish. He thought they were hilarious.
We did a whole lot more B week than I can remember. We ended up taking a week off thanks to everyone feeling a little tired, run down and not making it to the library. He got to watch a whole lotta Happy Feet, probably more than he should have, but, hey, he can sing some Earth, Wind and Fire now! Talk about educational!
Denver’s February has been mild, to say the least. It hit 67° today, 65° yesterday. The entire month has been like this with no end in sight. So, I got complacent and maybe a tad overexcited with the sunflower seeds we picked up at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago.
To be fair, I did wait a week before ripping open the package and, by the time I thoroughly thought through the whole “threat of frost looming until April” thing and “these suckers may pop well before April” thing, I’d already added water to the dirt pellet and had talked up the, “oooh, we’re going to PLANT SEEDS” thing to the boy. I had no choice but to go forward with the “planting too damn early” thing. I just hoped and prayed that these little seedlings would either be duds, or sleepy. They weren’t. Less than a week later, that picture is what we have.
I’ll either be needing to transplant those little suckers into their own clay pots very soon, or follow my nearly uncontrollable urge to plant them, along with my anniversary lily bulbs, and kill them all when the inevitable big March dump comes. If I’m going to slaughter new plants, I may as well do it all at once. Efficiency, people, efficiency. I am so very close to officially losing all semblance of sanity that I went out on Monday, armed with a rake and a one year old wielding a shovel, and raked all the mulch off of my flower bed, making many worms very, very angry at me in the process. I raked for an hour only to pull out a devil weed with a root as big as my freaking fist, rake all the mulch back into place and try to talk my screaming, shovel wielding toddler into coming back into the house with me. Forget Freddy Krueger, trying to take a mini plastic shovel away from a 19 month old that’s screaming and shaking is entirely more terrifying.
Since the weather’s been so nice, Tuesday we took advantage of the last free day at the zoo. And so did everyone.in.Colorado. We spent 30 minutes grumbling and and hollering curse words (the boy was sleeping) at the mass amounts of raging idiots capability-challenged drivers who either couldn’t figure out a stop sign to save their lives or thought it was perfectly acceptable to stop dead in the middle of the lot (with 30 cars piled up behind them) in order to drop their 4 trillion family members off and/or wait for a spot where the family (with 3 kids in strollers) has newly arrived at their car, because putting kids into car seats? Totally only takes 10 seconds. My favorite was the entire family that was having a tailgate party just so they can piss off the entire state of Colorado trying to find parking in order to, I don’t know, maybe ENTER THE ZOO. At right around the time I stuck my head out the window to yell how stupid people were 30 minute mark, it dawned on us that there was a near empty parking lot just down the block. Unfortunately, I cannot share this spot information with you, dear reader, because all 7 of you may make a beeline for that spot next time, which will be good for neither of us, what with my screaming rage and all.
We parked in our Super Secret Spot and ended up in the zoo in 10 minutes flat, that’s including pulling out a sleeping child, removing the stroller, opening the stroller, having a fight with the diaper bag in an attempt to fit it into the giant-but-not-giant-enough stroller basket, placing said (now awake) child in the stroller, getting through the insane amount of strollers, laughing at the people still trying to park, getting through the gates, and receiving our map along with a, “There’s a baby giraffe.” To which the boy looked completely unimpressed and I hooted, “OOOH! BABY GIRAFFE!” because I’m working on embarrassing the crap out of him now so I don’t have to put in as much work later.
We got to see the gorilla eating a banana, the elephant pretend to nearly commit suicide (because it’s gotta be hilarious to just take a step near the edge and hear a billion parents gasp at once), and the bears trying to rip out each other’s jugulars. The boy go to tell every child within ear distance what it was they were looking at over and over again. “OOh! Dat’s…dat’s…dat’s an el-phant! Look at dat! Ooooh! Dat’s…dat’s a big bear! Wow! Look at dat! Dat’s…dat’s…a gowilla! Gowilla eat banana! Wow! Look at dat! PEACOCK! PEAAAAAAACOOOOOOOCK!” It was quite a bit more memorable for the boy than our first visit, if only because he has not stopped reminding us there was a gorilla! And it was eating a banana! And there was a peacock! PEACOOOOOOOOOCK! Because we absolutely would not be able to remember that had he not hollered it 2 inches from my face at 3 o’clock this morning. Absolutely not.
ETA: I almost forgot the high-low-light of the day. There is a Nemo-esque clown and blue tang fish mini-aquarium at the zoo. A seemingly sweet 9-or-so year old little girl was standing, alone, next to us screeching, “HI, DORY!” at the blue tang fish. This seemingly sweet 9-or-so year old lone, little girl then proceeded to SMACK the tank, Darla style, scaring the shit out of the fish in the process. To which both Eric and I exclaimed, “WOAH!” and stared at her like she was from another planet. Would the proper response then have been to tell her not to do that? Or would it have been to, I don’t know, walk away while questioning where the hell her parents were and discussing how sweet she LOOKED until she went all Osama Bin Laden on the fish? I’ll let you guess which one I chose.
Everyone is pregnant. Bold statement, I know, but they are. “But, I’m not pregnant!,” you may say. And if you do, you and I are the only ones, my friend. The only ones.
There’s something about pregnancy that is catching. It causes baby fever in folks like me and, henceforth, everyone I see is pregnant. Everything I read is about pregnancy or newborns. All of a sudden, my entire family begins asking and hinting at “giving the boy someone to play with…” (apparently, a friend so doesn’t count) because baby fever is airborne.
Soon after a darling friend of mine gave birth to her newest, I went on an old video, old picture bender. I went through every video and picture I had of the boy from birth forward. I oogled and swooned. I got teary and kissed him so many times he took off with a, “Buhsh teef, mommy…” He was so over it, he’d rather brush his teeth than sustain another kiss, sigh and squeeze from me. Of course, the simple fact that he could talk, walk and, you know, breathe without me made me chase after him and squeeze him more.
Naturally, the unthinkable began to be thought. What about having another baby? Someone for the boy to play with, to learn with, to…whatever…with (I’m an only child, I have no idea what you multi-spawn do with each other but, in my head, it was all very Normal Rockwell-y). I started actively missing the belly movement, the newborn smell, the first smile, the not horribly stank ass poo.
Through all this, my thoughts kept going to the Boy, and I realized, I don’t know that I necessarily want another as much as I want to relive baby-dom with the little guy I already have. It absolutely could all harken back to the only child thing. The fact that I can’t imagine loving anyone in addition to the boy. That the idea of the boy sharing my time with anyone makes me feel unimaginable levels of guilt. That having another would unmistakably make him understand that he is not the only center of the universe which, in and of itself, is a good thing (as witnessed by the recent loss of friendship with someone who could not grasp that idea) but is still a little saddening to me. Because my boy? He deserves all of everything I have to give. I do realize my level of insanity, in case you were wondering.
It didn’t help to go back and read the horri-freaking-fying tumultuous relationship I had with my pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. The idea of another pregnancy sent off giant, flaming red flags in my head. Flags held by tiny pregnant me’s screaming, “WTF IS YOUR PROBLEM?! HAVE YOU LOST YOUR SHIT?!” Because, Lord knows, I couldn’t get through all that crap again with a toddler on hand. I’m afraid I’d have to give the boy to my parents for longer than an hour, which would lead to a level of ridiculously placed guilt I’m just not sure I’m willing to deal with. Funny thing is, my pregnancy and subsequent baby-rearing was absurdly easy compared to some of my friends’ who are pregnant as we speak. My fear of another reasonably uneventful pregnancy is almost laughable and, surprise, another source of guilt.
What it comes down to is that I’m just not yet sold on the second kid thing. Right now, there are too many reasons to say no. We want a better house, we want to be more financially stable, and, most importantly, we want the boy to have the best we can give him. It’s no secret that the boy can be overwhelming sometimes and I’m not entirely sure if that is my problem or his. I wonder if he’s really a needy child, or just a normal kid that I’m just not good at keeping up with. If the latter is the case, then keeping up with two will do neither of them any favors. Which leads to, you guessed it, guilt. Guilt that I can’t keep up with my boy, guilt that I may be depriving him of a sibling because of my own issues, guilt that I may not be doing what’s best for him, whether or not I have another.
Guilt is one of the few things I retained of my Catholic self. That, my love of santos and inability to not cross myself at the sight of a Catholic church or pure evil. You know, like liquor stores and moms with more than one child*. Ave Maria Purisima!
I got up at 6:30 this morning to have a little me time. Thanks to the crushing guilt that overtakes me whenever I think of wanting one moment of doing something that doesn’t include my son, I rarely get (or ask/accept) a moment that doesn’t include The Boy in some way or another. So, the husband did me a solid by sleeping in an extra couple of hours with The Boy (that selfless man’o'mine) while I checked my email, drank some coffee and cleaned the living room. You heard me right, I used my “me” time to clean the living room. (At this moment, my 18 year old self is screaming, “What happened to you, man? You used to be cool.” To which I would respond, “Shut up! Go back to your drinking your rum punch and partying all night and being 400 many pounds lighter and having no responsibili…skank.”)
We spent the rest of the morning arguing about what should and should not be covered with marker and paint making Valentines. His latest artistic obsession is, “TRACE HAND! TRACE HAND!” So, before taking the time to think, “Huh, these are Prismacolor markers…and the last time I got Prismacolors on my hand, I contemplated using them for tattoos. Maybe this isn’t the best idea seeing as how, you know, the marker is red and matches the blood perfectly.” Instead, I yanked the top off the marker as quickly as I could so as to stop the screams of, “TRAAAAACE HAAAAAAND, MOMMYYYYYYYYYYY! TRAAAAAAACE HAAAAAAAAAND!” And managed to cover the edges of his fingers in blood red, super-staining marker ink which, even after a multitude of washes, still looks like I let my kid play in a paper shredder. Which should make for interesting conversation at family dinner tomorrow.
“What blood? Oh, that. Yeah, we were letting him play on a rusty pile of cans and compost when he fell over and tore his ear off. We just stapled it back on. It should stop bleeding eventually.” If my next post is complaining about the ever growing cost of bail, you’ll know what happened.
– We still have this in our possession. The boy memorized it after one freaking reading. He loves it.
– This was a hit and miss. I think it was a little too long to hold a toddler’s attention, but he did ask for it regularly, if even just to get through 1/2 of it before screaming for something else.
– This was a little too young for him. He memorized it and read it to himself by the end of the day.
– We still have this one, as well. He’s a big fan, especially of the “chiles picantes”, which he repeats the moment we get past the “yummm, tortillllllllla!”
– He liked repeating the animal noises in Spanish. He thought they were hilarious.
, probably more than he should have, but, hey, he can sing some Earth, Wind and Fire now! Talk about educational!
